hi, good afternoon. i'm maria bartiromo coming to you live from rockefeller city in new york city where the markets are at a standstill today and tomorrow as millions brace fort brunt of hurricane sandy. >> i'm bill griffeth at cnbc global headquarters. this is usually the last hour of trading but this is the beginning of the worst of sandy. the situation getting more dangerous. that's a live picture out of midtown manhattan. a damaged crane atop a building located on west 57th street in midtown manhattan. all of that as a result of the heavy, heavy winds that are been hitting that area of new york city. we will keep you updated on that particular story. in fact, we have whole team

coverage from every angle of this story. todd gross is here with us at battery park city, we have mary thompson from the port of baltimore, brian shactman is on long island. kayla tauche in cape may, new jersey, and we will be navigating the carnage for the next two hours. it is expected to pick up in severity in that time frame. let's start with the big picture from todd gross. todd, where is hurricane sandy although this moment. tell us what comes next. >> less than 100 miles to the southeast of atlantic city. in fact, breaking news for you. the storm is accelerating to the point it's likely to cross the new jersey shoreline by 7:00 tonight. if it does so, it means we may get rid of it a little earlier. it also means the impact will be that much greater. the storm about to slam in from the east into new jersey. this is a really curious storm.

i'll explain why. the latest 940 millibars. what does that mean? it means it's a deep storm. if it transitions to a nontropical system, a nonl hurrica nonhurricane, it will be classified as the strongest nonhurricane ever to strike the united states. so far it's maintained enough of its hurricane characteristics that it's going by the name hurricane sandy. it's still acting like a hurricane at this hour with winds at 190 miles an hour. let's check it out on the radar loop. you can just about see where the center is there. if you look all the way on the right-hand side side of the screen, you can see there is kind of a point where it starts to not show anything anymore. almost the circulation, kind of semicircle right there, showing you that there is some sort of circulation right there trying to show up. now, it is still very organized, even though it's dry on the east side, according to this radar.

it's still a impact, almost bomb-like characteristic in terms of the way it looks in atlantic city. the new jersey shoreline bearing the brunt of this but effects felt clear to the north. wind under control, kind of. gusting 50 to 60 miles an hour from cape cod, long island, down the new jersey shoreline. however, what's likely to happen late in the storm is we're expecting that the southeast winds on the far side of the storm, tafter it moves by, will pick up on ground level even more, when we see the gusts of 70, 80 plus miles an hour, maybe to 90. finally the waves, looks like 8:00 tonight, high tide on jersey shoreline. 9:00 in new york city. speaking of new york, this is new york city off the bronx city island where the waves at low tide are impressive. never mind what's going to happen at high tide around 8:00 or 9:00 tonight.

storm moving in at the same time the tide is rising that's why we're expecting near reported floods. watch this, as this is all breaking news right now in the next few hours. we'll be back very soon. >> before we let you go, we're always looking for some little spark of good news. and you seem to be suggesting it will hit -- it's speeding up. hit the coast sooner than anticipated and that means we may get rid of it sooner than anticipated as well. >> i think late night we'll start to see this wind down rather than being an all-night affair. that's one piece of good news. the other -- let me see if i can -- >> no, that's -- that's good right there. >> another piece of good news. it's not the strongest storm. there's some misconception. it's not the stronger hurricane ever to affect the united states. it will be the strongest nontropical storm. even though it's a super storm, its not a super hurricane. i want folks to understand that. >> get our nomenclature down

properly. thank you very much. scott cohen in battery park city, on the southern part. shore, in the mandatory evacuation zone. what's it like down there right now, scott? >> reporter: bill, as you can see, the water is behind me. new york harbor is getting angrier and angrier, as the tide begins to rise as we head into evening. the wind at ground level aren't that bad. it's the winds above. as all advisories say, you get into high-rise buildings, the winds get that much stronger. take a look at that precarious situation uptown from here, up at 57th and 6th avenue with the partial crane collapse. you get above into the high-rise buildings, that's where the situation becomes even more and more difficult with the wind. come back to me live here now at battery park. we're talking about a 6 to 11-storm storm surge. that's what they're saying. in other words, that is 6 feet

above what you're expecting the level to be at high tide. so, there's the water. there's the railing. it will be above my head. obviously, i won't be able to stand here. if that's the case, you're almost certainly talking about water getting into new york city subway system. that creates a lot of problems with the city gng back up and running after the storm passes. take a look live at the new york stock exchange. it's high and drive. it's not in the evacuation zone. of course, it is closed and they're keeping an eye on it. a much bigger problem, though, the nymex, which is right on the river in zone "a." earlier today we saw water coming in over the sea wall. that's something they have to be looking at very, very closely to try to avoid any damage there. so, wind aloft, storm surge down here, a potentially devastating mixture. back to you.

>> thank you so much. we've been watching the water get elevated and elevated. this is an evolving story. we are expecting things -- conditions to worsen significantly in the next two hours. so, we'll be covering for you. and certainly taking you to all these spots. let's get to mary thompson. she's at the port in baltimore. anything moving through the port right now? >> reporter: nothing at all, maria. the port shut down today. i'm standing on the chesapeake bay. actually, the port is a little to my east. keep in mind, of course, the water is not very rough here because it is a bay. we're nevertheless protected. nevertheless what they're concerned about in maryland is flooding. almost all of the state is under a flood watch. that's one reason they closed the port of baltimore which means a lot of the u.s. coal exported or sent out from that port is not going anywhere for at least a day, possibly two days. and foreign cars coming into the port, not moving anywhere. similar situations happening up and down the east coast. the port of new york and new jersey, the third largest in the country, also shutting down its

operations because of the severe weather, as well as port of philadelphia and port of wilmington, part of the port of delaware. an area that imports a majority of crude oil into the east coast used by refineries. the refineries don't have use for crude oil because many are running at reduced run rates. from a rainy baltimore, back to you. >> thank you very much, mary. >> brian shactman on long island due east of manhattan where many residents have evacuated. what's the latest there? >> reporter: i came out here just to give people an impression of what's going on. i lean a little -- why i have the kareem abdul-jabbar -- 60-mile-an-hour wind with sand coming at my face. it's painful. i can tell you we're now starting to see the tide come in. tide here is 8 p.m. we're expected to have this area probably taken out. and then within the next ten minutes -- you see that, i was there a little while back. you can get a feel for these

gusts now. 50 or 55-mile-an-hour gust because i can still stand up pretty well. this population in eastern hampton, eastern tip of long island is 100,000 in the summer but only 20,000 permanent residents. i'm told many of them -- we lost power in the hotel we're staying here up on the bluff. they're not yet on generators. the anticipation is as the afternoon wears on, water goes up, wind sustained, we talked to leadership of the boroughs and leadership, they said if this wind sustains for hours, there will be a lot of damage. a lot of powerful fcti, wealthy famous people have homes out here. winds a problem. the north shore, where the seinfelds live, water will be a bigger issue. we're worsening here. we'll be with you every hour on the hour. >> brian, there are a number of mandatory evacuations where you are, whether it's from montauk

even west into all of those hampton towns, correct? >> reporter: no. last check it wasn't mandatory. honestly, they can't change the policy because you can't move. if you're here, you're stuck with it. they opened shelters at 8:00 this morning. we talked to officials, and they have no plans to change their evacuations. it was not mandatory. >> brian, thanks very much. i know there are a handful of places a little more west, like dune road in westhampton. we'll keep checking back. kayla, you're in new jersey on the coast looking at cape may. what are you seeing? >> reporter: maria, the storm is at double the speed it was earlier today. 28 miles per hour which doesn't sound like it's going that fast but it's really barrelling toward us on the southern new jersey shore when you consider the fact it's sustaini ining wi of 90 miles per hour in that storm. that's greater than what we're

seeing right now. we think landfall will happen within the next three hours, earlier than expected and right before that all-important high tide. we're gearing toward that high tide. water levels are rising, which doesn't help the fact that the southern new jersey area has already seen record flooding in the coastal and the inland areas. of course, atlantic city completely under water at this point. access to ocean city now cut off. much of ocean city under water, sea side heights, the entire stretch of the 83-mile shoreline here in new jersey. like brian said, if you're here, you're stuck, you missed your window to get out. even if you are trying to get out, you can't go anywhere. governor chris christie has closed 130 miles of highway. so, new jersey residents here, thousands of them without power, but many glad it's coming earlier than expected, hunkering down and hoping the worse will pass shortly. >> thank you very much.

we'll be checking back. >> we're watching that picture very carefully of that high rise that's been under construction for several months in midtown manhattan. eventually going to be 90 stories high. and that crane that sits atop it, you shouldn't see that portion dangling that's sitting parallel to the building itself. that has been a partial collapse of that crane there. our robert frank is on the phone. you've covered that high rise on wealth report. it's been under construction for a while. what can you tell us? >> reporter: as you mentioned, this is a very high-profile building to begin with. 90 stories tall. several of the penthouses have sold for more than $90 million apiece. so, we have several billionaires living in this building. the reason it's already been under scrutiny is there getting some tax breaks for buyers as well as the developer, originally aimed at low income tax pairs. so, this is a building already under some scrutiny, some

controversy. no indication whether they've done anything wrong here but it means people will be watching this very closely to see if anyone was at fault with this crane or anything could have been done earlier because this building is so high profile. >> whoa heard reports they have evacuated the area below and around that building there just in case. certainly we hope for the best there. the reports we've this is the wind -- that high up, that's why they've encouraged people, even if you believe you liv in a safe haven in a high rise in new york city where flooding isn't an issue, the wind becomes an issue because as you got high enough up there, the wind can be up to 110 miles an hour. no doubt, that is what has caused this partial collapse of the crane above that building there at west 57th and 6th avenue in new york city. we're going to take a break here. if you think this storm is bad right now, it's only just the beginning. hurricane sandy just getting started and picking up steam right now, maria.

>> we'll keep you updated on the storm's progress and this dangerous situation with the damaged crane in midtown manhattan. the city is bracing for the worse of the storm coming in the coming hours. we'll on it. former wells fargo will give us an insider account of how wall street and banking sector is dealing with this disaster.

the crane hanging off the building, the building is called 157th. firefighters are on the scene, trying to contain this and enable this crane to get back into place and be off the building because there is in jeopardy right now of this crane falling off the building. new york officials evacuating the area around the partial crane collapse, bill. it's hanging from the building. firefighters are on the scene at this point.

>> you know the hurricane is coming, i'm not here to second guess somebody, but why it wasn't taken down is beyond me. you have to know if the wind are that high and we're talking about a major storm, whatever you to want call it here, a crane that high up is going to be a sitting duck and ready for something like this to happen. we only can hope now they can get the area evacuated and nothing tragic happens as a result of all of that. meantime, the new york stock exchange is scheduled to be closed again tomorrow. hopes to reopen wednesday if possible. >> it will be at least four days in a row stocks will not trade in the yas. what are the implications of that in this unprecedented closing. bob pisani, nathan backrock from financial network group. bob, we went from a plan to have electronic trading 24 hours ago, then late yesterday nyse saying they consulted with all constituents and they decided

markets would be closed for two days in a row. did they underestimate things at first? how did that go down? >> don't think they underestimated it, but i think they rethought it and i think rethought it properly. new york is still the center of the stock trading universe. most people who are trading can't get in to trade, can't get in to participate, the question arises, who is there to trade in a thin market? i think with our concerns about market structure, market liquidity, market hot flashes and crazy flashes, flash crashes, et cetera, i think cooler heads prevailed and we have a closure. i think that was the right thing to do. >> brian bellski, what impact does this have? we do have electronic trading. we're in a period where people could trade from wherever they are. they don't are to be in a centralized location now. is it necessary to close trading when you get an event like this? >> well, i think just from the low guesstic standpoint, as the prior guest talked about, yeah, it does make sense to close.

i think the bigger question, bill o a short-term basis is keep in mind that october 31st is the year-end for many mutual funds out there. i would venture to guess they're going to try to want to get this market open by wednesday. it's been volatile, people are nervous due to q3 earnings and we think profit taking has been all about trying to set in profits before this mutual fund tax year. wednesday could be quite a volatile period. >> they want to do that for sure, brian, because i did speak to the nys sxechlt they're very eager, even if they have to open on an abbreviated session on wednesday, bring in a skeletal staff to the new york stock exchange, they do want to open for exactly the reason you talked about. >> nathan, people talking about lost revenue for exchanges. what would you expect come wednesday if, in fact, we do have the opening on time, even if it is abbreviated? would you expect we would see people wanting to blow out of positions because they haven't

we been able to? what impact will this have in terms of pries? >> short term, i think the market is headed for 40, 50 down was the last on the futures when we stopped trading. i think it goes down in the short term, unless the storm wind up being less than looking like it's going to be right now. if it comes in stronger, i think that's in the short term. will take markets down a little further, especially if we continue to see all of the early voting being stopped. i think people are going to start to make political calculations here. and as you know, this has been a year or two when politics has had as much to do with money as anything. and i think if we continue to see that happen, that could have as much impact on this market as 80-mile-an-hour winds. >> you think we get a sizeable selloff once things resume? >> initially, i think we always do because people don't react. they overreact. i think after that cooler heads will start to prevail and you'll start to see we're where we are,

which is not too terribly good, not too terribly bad. >> we're going to move on and breaking news. thanks for being here. >> we're watching this weather circancea lot more to come in t hurricane sandy edition of the qu "closing bell ". >> the we track the damaged crane. what it means for key sectors like retail and we'll talk with jetblue's chief operating officer, talk about how long airline travel gets back to normal again.

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live picture of lower manhattan at battery park. hurricane sandy gaining strength hours before expected to make landfall. we've been hearing reports it's picked up pace as well. its speed has doubled in the last couple of hours. it's expected to make landfall much earlier than anticipated. about 7:00 eastern time and be out of the area perhaps before midnight, which would be much, much earlier than anticipated. a little ray of hope. but that doesn't mean we'll have less damage necessarily. >> apparently there was an an uning on an apartment that flew off that spectators witnessed early. we have that crane hanging off of 157th street.

so, you have things picking up and worsening before sandy hits land, which we are expecting in the coming several hours. the worst of the storm for the northeast is just beginning. >> weather channel's paul walsh looking at how saentd's latest path will lead to a domino effect down the road. what can you tell us? >> the storm is moving in. up with of the things that's ironic about the timing of the storm is that prior to the storm hitting, this weekend, specifically saturday, we saw very, very strong traffic. thap compared to last year when the snowtober storm hit. i would dpop see a little upside when retail sales come out. november, game over. it looks like we'll lose the first week of retail sales for the largest retailers in the northeast. >> what about -- let's talk about that. you're saying we have a bit of an upside but when we look at november numbers, the numbers are right in sandy's cross

hairs. >> absolutely. what impact do you think this has on retail sales? >> citigroup was out with an analysis they did. they expect that in november we could see a 2% or 3% drop in specialty retailers of folks not selling. goods you need in front of a hurricane. the traffic hit is going to be very, very strong this week. that's because of the weather. now, probably more impactful will be the power outages we see going forward, which could last a week, possibly ten days in some areas. >> people need to be patient because the wind -- this is a heavily wooded area we're talking about. trees go down. roads will be closed for a while. and that power will be out for a while. portions of the northeast could be without power maybe until election day, do we think in. >> yes, yes. the weather is very impactful to the weather from a turnout perspective anyway. we've done research that shows 30% to 35% of independent voters will not vote if the weather's bad. not only on top of that, we have

upwards perhaps of 10 million people losing power this week. i'm sure there won't be that many by election day but it will be very disruptive, as well as disruptive to the campaigns. it throws a monkey wrench into the entire campaign and election. >> we don't know if there will be alternative plans as a result of that. i mean, already we were hearing earlier that the administration was considering not releasing the jobs numbers on friday. what are the alternative plans if, in fact, this does impact election day and the opportunity for those independents to vote? >> i think it could get really, really complicated and state by state. i don't i think we'll know unless the dust clears. it's an unprecedented event. you overlay it on timing before the week of the election, makes it that much more amazing and potentially impactful. >> we'll take a break. sandy's movement at this hours are crucial. we'll have the latest on the storm's trajectory. we're rounding up all the

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welcome back. hurricane sandy slamming the east coast. whoa we are looking at sandy coming in, making landfall in the next couple of hours. we wanted to show you a damaged crane in the heart of manhattan. building 157th street. the crane was on top of the building. the wind have been so severe, it knocked part of the crane off the building and currently hanging off of that building. firefighters are at the scene, telling folks to evacuate, get away from this building in case

this crane falls from the top of the building. an extraordinary shot we're looking at now. >> ultraluxury apartment building still under construction. as our robert frank reported a little while ago, some had already been purchased for tens of millions of dollars. that building going to 90 stories when all is said and done. winds wreaking havoc in midtown manhattan. the worst may still yet be to come from sandy. todd gross track latest path. >> indeed, the worst is to come. it's going to happen within the next few hours. we're approaching crunch time as this is accelerating and moving ahead of schedule. make no mistake about that. that is a mixed blessing. let me explain why.

it's likely to hit the new jersey shoreline at or slightly north of atlantic city at about 7:00 tonight. now, that is, of course, a little ahead of schedule. not enough displaced from high tide, though. for any good news. close enough to the high tide which on the jersey shoreline is around 8:00 to 8:30. that's not good news. good news is it's likely to get out quicker. since it's moving faster it's going to bring a stronger storm surge to the north of it. let's take a look at wind with the storm. i expect the worst winds will be just after landfall. let me explain why. right now this is a sprawling storm. much of the northeast of the united states is affected by it but tough winds are from boston to philadelphia and washington. especially around new york city, boston and down to atlantic city, of course. but just after the storm center moves onshore, what's going to happen is the winds to the north of the center will switch to the

southeast. when that happens, it tends to allow the winds above to mix down to the ground layer more efficiently, which is bad news for us. because that would, of course, bring some stronger winds that so far have been trapped at upper levels down and we expect more damage at that time. that should last until about midnight and then things should start to ease. we get a whole new set of problems and that has to do with heavy lands inland and snow over west virginia and virginia and parts of pennsylvania. let's talk about the waves since this is really the big issue. when the storm first moves in, we'll see waves 20, 30, 40 feet on top of the storm surge on normal tide level. that means at times the water will be 30 to 40 feet above frowned level and that will affect the exposed areas of southern long island and the new jersey shoreline. that's where the damage is going to come from primarily from this storm. now, there will be extensive

power outages as well. it's that storm surge and those big waves or swells that i think are going to be very similar to what happened in the perfect storm on the massachusetts shoreline up through kittery, maine. president bush had a residence in kittery, maine. in this case we're expecting that kind of damage around new jersey. anyway, it's all in the next three to six hours. we'll be watching it with frequent updates. stay with us right here on cnbc. >> thank you very much. thousands of people across the northeast, as you can imagine, are without power that the hour. that number continues to grow. courtney reagan is tracking all of the outages and business closures for us. >> that's right, bill. there's a lot to keep track of. a number of headlines to get to. i want to go to one in election. martin o'malley says early vote willing be canceled in the states. we'll see if other states follow

suit. a crane atop a 90-story high rise building on west 157th street in manhattan has broken. police are shutting down the surrounding area. over 100 officials on the scene. some of the first looks at damage in pennsylvania. look at the tree on this philadelphia house. you can see the strtree is dama, roof, heavy rains. a number of updates when it comes to transportation. the tappen. >> he the tappen zee bridge is closing at 4 p.m. the verrazano is prohibiting unstable cargo. garden stay parkway with close south at exit 129 at 4:00. new jersey transit has closed tomorrow's storm surge. hoboken is issuing a 6 p.m. curfew for residence. amtrak closing northeast service tomorrow. the fdr in new york city is under water in many parts, which means it's effectively closed.

more than 12,000 flights have already been canceled. phil lebeau will continue to update us on that number. and this number especially, a moving target. current reports put more than 330,000 customers without power in seven states. right now new jersey does have the majority of those outages and more than 167,000. kon con edison is making robo calls noting they may be preemptively shutting down power in some areas. that map shows you what could likely be to come. as far as business closures, macy's has closed 130 locations, broadway shows remain dark, starbucks closed a number of stores. that's what you know it's serious. fedex canceling deliveries in many areas. capital one bank locations are closed. that's just a few because we certainly could not give you everything that's closed. you might just want to stay? >> thanks very much. will this devastating storm

have an impablgt on our already sluggish economy? we'll turn the attention there next. this is going to be a thorny issue. financial trade group sifma says if the new york stock exchange is closed again tomorrow, then all dollar denominated securities should be closed around the world. new york governor andrew cuomo will have a press conference and we'll talk to him live one-on-one after the press conference. he'll tell us what he's seeing and advise new yorkers of the next steps. rt comes with 8 airb, a crash management system and the world's only tridion safety cell which can withstand over three and a half tons. small in size. big on safety. oh, hey alex. just picking up some, brochures, posters copies of my acceptance speech. great! it's always good to have a backup plan, in case i get hit by a meteor. wow, your hair looks great. didn't realize they did photoshop here. hey, good call on those mugs.

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hurricane sandy continuing to evolve, gain strength and speed. the storm may be a couple of hours away from making landfall. hours earlier than anticipated. maybe 7 p.m. eastern time. we'll keep you updated. the other story we're following right now is this luxury high rise still under construction in the middle of new york city at west 57th. that crane that has been teetering precariously for the last hour or so as a result of the heavy winds. we're just now getting word new york city officials have ordered the evacuation of the upper floors of several of the buildings near the site of that building there. so, they had evacuated the area

below on the ground level around it. now areas around that area. that's a 90-story building. so, it towers over other high-rises in that portion of new york city. and those other buildings, at least the upper floors, are now being evacuated at this hour, maria. >> you have to wonder why that crane was left on the top of the building, knowing the threat of sandy. i'm being told that 157 is owned by extel and owned by bovis. there were some problems, they were overseeing the building that killed two firemen at deutsche building. people will want to know why it was left up there as firefighters get control with maximum sustained winds happening in new york city. how much will this massive storm impact the nation's economy and potentially this friday's employment report?

eamon javers live with that report. >> we saw president barack obama in white house briefing room earlier today. basically his message was everybody ought to follow instructions given to them by state and local officials. the rest of the federal government here in washington is closed today. that includes the department of labor. however, folks at department of labor the bls is working hard on friday he's jobs report. the last one before election day. much anticipated. here's a statement we have from the department of labor. they say employees at bureau of labor statistics are working hard to ensure the timely release of employment data on friday, november 2nd. it's our intention friday will be business as usual recording the october employment situation report. no guarantees from the department of labor they're get this report out by friday because their workers are scatter add cross the region right now but they say their intent is to get it out. how could that affect the actual report itself? experts say in terms of the

storm's impact in the last couple of days of the month, what you might see is an impact a little bit on hours worked, but not necessarily on the overall employment situation. it's mostly a question now of whether the staff can gather that data, get it into the department of labor, get it processed in the normal way and get it out on friday. based on all the chaos that's going on here in washington right now, maria. >> thank you. bill? >> wall street may be closed today but the cme was open for business in chicago. we'll take you there live for a trading recap coming up. also ahead, the impact the storm will have on the financial sector. former wells fargo ceo is with us.

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hurricane sandy gaining strength. maybe three hours away from making landfall along theiercy shore. we're still following the story in midtown manhattan as new york city officials scramble to evacuate the area below and around this luxury high-rise apartment building still under construction on west 57th street there. that crane on the left side dangling precariously and has for a little over an hour. the result of the heavy winds

plaguing new york city at this hour. maria? >> the cme is saying stock index futures will open at 7 p.m. tonight for overnight trading. of course, the markets are closed today and tomorrow. so from the jobs market to the bond market impact of hurricane sandy, this has been quite widespread. the securities industry and financial markets association, or sifma, says the bond market will remain closed tomorrow. a move they did not make during hurricane irene. >> sifma recommends closing u.s. government securities trading in tokyo and london as well. joining us on the phone to talk about that and more is sifma president and ceo, tim ryan. thanks for joining us here. >> thanks for being there. actually, both you, bill, and maria. >> your feeling is if they don't trade in new york, they shouldn't trade dollar-denominated currencies around the world.

>> our recommendation was to close early today at noon. we chose to do it at noon principally because there were treasury auctions scheduled today. we wanted to get those finished. we recommended a close tomorrow. >> what about this cme report just moments ago that says overnight trading will happen at 7 p.m. tonight. how does that play into everything? i guess we want your take on the overall impact of a full market shutdown, like we're seeing, and what you're recommendation. >> well, remember, we recommend to our member firms, so they'll make the decision on cme on their own. typically when we make a recommendation because it's coordinated with the regulators globely, the firm spots those recommendations. >> your recommendation has been to close tokyo in london and dollar deny securities as well. is that what's happening? >> this is fixed income,

remember? >> i understand. >> we're talking treasuries, mbs -- >> tokyo is scheduled to open in a few hours. will they trade those securities, do you know? >> well, typically our member firms will not be trading the dollar denominated fixed income securities. >> but what's the impact of this? the last time the new york stock exchange was closed for more than a day due to weather was in 1888. what are you expecting in terms of the financial impact with markets closed for 24 or 48 hours? >> well, remember, our focus here has been principally on the functionality of the markets. so, we don't want any interruptions. that's one principle focus. the second is the security of the personnel. >> what is the impact, then? what's the financial impact? because this is an interruption, right? >> it is an interruption. markets have other interruptions, so we really can't say what the interruption

will have. quite frankly, the system works quite well. it's been very well coordinated. all the interesting parties, all of the firms, all of the exchanges, governments have made these decisions collectively. >> we really don't know, right? we don't know the impact until trading begins again, so we don't know everything is okay. so my question to you, once again, is what do you expect the financial impact to be after two days of closures? >> and i -- and i can't really answer that question. i don't know. >> what about backup system -- >> we'll know tomorrow. we'll know when it opens. >> after 9/11 we were told there would be backup systems. we wouldn't have these kind of closures because, listen, you don't need a trading floor, with all due respect to my floors there at the new york stock exchange, to trade. you can trade electronically. i understand safety issues for those traders located in lower manhattan but plenty of other traders who could be trading otherwise right now. is there no backup system that can -- to see the world financial markets continue to

trade even when there is an interruption in one part of that world? >> there are electronic trading systems, principally in the equity area, but in some pieces of the fixed income areas. and the decision here was made principally because of the human capital which would include not only traders but we're talking about all of the mid, back office compliance, personnel, who basically couldn't get to work because most of that is centered in new york. >> have you discussed the possibility of closure on wednesday? is that up in the air? are we waiting to see how things go? what's your decision on wednesday's closing? >> we'll make that decision probably before noon tomorrow. we'll go through the same thing we've done. we did it over the weekend. we did it today. we'll coordinate with all the relevant parties, firms. >> one of the an lis i spoke with earlier said he's looking at about a million dollars in revenue a day for these

exchanges. that sounded incredibly low to me. that's your estimate in terms of revenue lost for the major institutions here with the markets closed? >> we don't have those estimates. you know, typically what happens inmarkets, maria, you know this, if it it doesn't happen one day, it rolls to the next day. if it doesn't happen, it just rolls to the day forward. >> tim ryan of sifma, thanks for joining us today. >> okay. thank you. >> you bet. more now on hurricane sandy's impact on trading. unlike its peers, the chicago mercantile exchange was open for at least a partial trading day. a storm like this creates real problems for forecasting things like crude oil prices, right? >> makes sense. what was today's session like and what's expected for tomorrow? he joins us right now live from chicago. good to see you, sir. thanks for joining us. let's talk about the impact and what you expect tomorrow after these closings. >> what i've been watching is

the energy prices. with all these big closures of all these refineries on the east coast, it's not a surprise you'll see crude a little lower and also unleaded gasoline higher. what i like to do on days like today is i like to go out in markets and say, this is what should be happening. this is not what's happening. look at the crude and what happened to the crude spreads today. in theory, if end users don't want crude on the spot market right now, they would pay to store it. in theory you should have seen futures in the back months being bid up. we didn't see that today. you saw some strength in the forward spreads. that really caught my eye. am i all that interested in being short crude in the mid-80s after this market was just at 102? no way. not inttd at all. >> how liquid is the market right now, tres? >> i would say the market's as liquid as any other day because the majority of that market is traded electronically. i've been trading crude all morning and i haven't noticed any sort of drop in liquidity. >> but you would thinks given

the potential upset to crude supplies, given the storm, that prices would have gone higher, right? that's not what we saw. >> not necessarily. if you think of it from the end user's standpoint, if they can't process it they'll say, i'm going to store it and not use it later. if you don't have end users using it, that means more supply, ergo, crude going down. as we move into the election, i'm not interested in being short crude at these levels. no way, no how. >> how high do you think gasoline goes? very quickly. >> that's a tough one because our refining capacity is tight already. you take refining capacity off the market here. that's a real problem. >> indeed. tres, thanks for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> we're getting started on the special hurricane sandy coverage today. >> airlines getting grounded throughout the northeast, having an impact around the world, as a matter of fact. the chief operating officer of jetblue explains when your

flight may finally get off the ground. also ahead, a wave of earnings reports getting delayed because of this storm. we'll tally up the earnings impact. customer erin swenson bought from us online today.

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new york governor andrew cuomo to update everybody, the impact hurricane sandy is having on the state of new york. let's listen in. >> national guard's second visit to new york. yesterday we talked about the probable storm track bringing surge conditions and high wind conditions to the metropolitan region, specifically vulnerable until long island and today we're seeing exactly what was predicted yesterday. more or less within the range. what you see today outside, latest weather predictions indicate what we'll be seeing for the next several hours, most likely intensified in terms of wind and water. so, that's the basic situation. the governor has a few announcements to make today and the governor is going to -- i'm going to turn it over to county